Date: 7/8/26 9:33 am From: Alvaro Jaramillo via groups.io <chucao...> Subject: [pen-bird] Cooks Petrels offshore - Craveri's Murrelet - and new pelagic scheduled for July
Hello all
The three back-to-back trips, two to the Farallon Islands last Friday
and Saturday as well as the Half Moon Bay trip on Sunday were superb. Apart
from the amazing yet regular species we see in abundance on the Farallon
Islands we saw a lot of unusual birds offshore. I think that if one had to
back up to the 10,000-foot view, Black Storm-Petrels are well inshore and
relatively easy to find. We found them inside of the Farallon Islands, and
some were quite close to shore out of Half Moon Bay. Folks who seawatch
should be on the lookout for them as they are closer to shore than we have
ever seen them around here. The other story is that Scripps's Murrelets seem
to be out there in numbers, they are not always an easy species to pick out
when weather is choppy. But we saw them on all three trips including the
Farallon Island trips where we have limited time offshore. Northern Fulmar
is also here in numbers that are not always this high in mid-summer. The
implication is that we have birds heading to us from the south (murrelet,
storm petrel) and from the north (Northern Fulmar). The behavior of the
storm petrels being closer to shore than normal is surely food oriented, but
we do not understand why.
Now for the unusual stuff. Friday the 3d we saw that Ancient Murrelet
on the Farallon trip. Unusual, but they are being recorded in well above
average numbers in various spots in California and Oregon. Again, a bird
seemingly retreating from poor food areas in the north. Sunday though blew
the roof off things, as this was a trip where we were able to spend time
well offshore. We found 5 species of storm-petrels! They were Black, Ashy,
Wilson's, Fork-tailed and Leach's. There were multiple Leach's (3), which is
always a difficult species for us here. Black Storm-Petrels were the most
common, and this is not the long term normal, but it has happened in warm
water years. We discovered that a pair of murrelets that flew by and were
photographed were in fact Craveri's Murrelets, 16 Scripps's Murrelets were
seen to highlight that they are numerous out there. But THE star of the show
was Cook's Petrels. Some of the folks who go out regularly will be amazed,
flabbergasted even to hear that we saw more Cook's Petrels than Pink-footed
Shearwaters! At times flocks of Cook's were visible sitting on the water,
and some great looks were had although often they did go by at a distance.
Photos below in the trip report. A total of 55 was estimated for Cook's, and
it likely was higher. Amazing. We think this situation will continue into
July unless conditions change radically. A couple of folks saw a
Flesh-footed Shearwater, and a nice number of Black-footed Albatross was
accented by a gorgeous adult Laysan Albatross that joined in the mix. The
birding was non-stop, superb. The Cook's and Craveri's and Laysan were in
San Francisco counties. We hope that if weather allows on upcoming trips, we
can look for these birds in both counties. We also had some superb marine
mammal watching, but the best was a Blue Whale that decided to actually
circle our boat. Just fantastic!
Given that our July 18 trip heading offshore is sold out and we sense
there is great interest to get out there, we have added a trip out of Half
Moon Bay on July 25 on the New Captain Pete. You can book on the link below.
